Can Digital Innovation Help to Protect the Planet?

For a lot of countries, from China to the US and even Japan, July 2022 was the hottest month since record-keeping began. Global heatwaves sparked numerous wildfires and displaced thousands from their homes. To help tackle air pollution, UNEP is working with numerous partners to try and enhance environmental sustainability and climate action. Experts say that in the years to come, an ecosystem of data platforms is going to be crucial to helping the environment.

Digital Transformation for a More Sustainable World

Technology is going to play a major part when it comes to helping the planet. GEMS Air is the biggest pollution network in the world, spanning 5,000 cities. Over 50 million people accessed the platform in 2020, with data being streamed to billboards around the world. This helps to alert people about the risks of current air quality numbers, in real-time.

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Certain industries moving online are also having a major impact on the environment. The entertainment sector is a prime example of this. When you sign up with a casino online, you don’t need to travel, so there’s less pollution released into the atmosphere. Online casinos also have the ability to host thousands of players at any one time, with many casinos offsetting carbon emissions or using green servers.

This allows people to play the best Megaways slots online while ensuring that there is little-to-no impact on the environment. Another example would be Netflix. Netflix offers thousands of titles through eco-friendly digital servers, with aims to halve their digital emissions by 2030. They aim to do this by investing in green tech while offsetting energy use in pursuit of their environmental goals. With many entertainment companies acting as pioneers for the green movement, digital transformation is proving to be the way forward in the race to net zero.

Lighthouse Digital Platforms

UNEP has also gone on to develop three lighthouse digital platforms. This showcases the power of digital technology, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence and even earth observation.

You also have the United Nations Biodiversity Lab 2.0, which is an open-source platform that features data and over 400 maps. This highlights the extent of climate change on nature, with spatial data helping decision-makers put nature at the heart of the decisions they make. By using digital technology and transformation, people can now visualise the systems that hold back natural disasters, as well as find ways to store planet-warming gasses, such as carbon dioxide.

It seems that technology has a huge part to play when it comes to protecting the planet. Whether this is through making services accessible to a bigger audience without the need to travel, or creating a digital map of the current state of climate change and its impact on nature, tech is the key to moving forward.

As technology advances, energy consumption will inevitably increase, so it is imperative that companies do what they can to ensure that these emissions are offset, so as to not stall progress. With green tech and eco-friendly services becoming more commonplace, the solution to this issue is already present.

David Prior

David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.